NEWSFLASHES

When Home Feels Foreign

Most people are prepared to experience some effects of ‘culture shock’ when they embark on an assignment abroad. However, not many are prepared to experience similar effects when they return to their home country. What is a ‘reverse culture shock’? Does it really exist, what are the signs, do we need to prepare for it and how?

Whether an expatriate or an independent migrant, after a number of years in a host country, we slowly slip into memories of friends and family who move on with their own lives, adjusting the best they can. When it comes to our work colleagues and professional networks, we pretty much fall off their radar.

With a difference of job prospect, repatriation as a possibility is somewhat similar for those sent by a company on an international assignment, and those who embarked of their own choice. Sooner or later the same questions will pop up in their minds: Would I be able to return? What am I returning to? Would there be a job for me? Would I be able to utilise my new skills? How will people react? What social networks are still there?

Through my work I get a lot of opportunities to talk to the newcomers. Interestingly, for most of them return and repatriation are not high on the agenda. Consequently, not many are aware of the phenomena called reverse-culture-shock, and its effects.

What is Reverse Culture Shock?
During our life abroad two major changes occur:

• We change as a result of living in another country;
• Life and people at home change and move on.

The problem is enlarged because of our tendency to idealise our view of home and expectation that things are the same as when we left them. Somehow life as we left it gets frozen in our memory, turning our home into a foreign place when we re-enter it, and we say in dismay What happened here? I don’t recognise this place and people any more?

Just as Culture Shock comes in stages, so does Reverse Culture Shock.

Confusion – it starts while still in a host location, and is manifested by feelings of sadness for leaving, as well as euphoria for returning.

Disorientation – as with any transition, there is a period when you don’t quite have a clear sense of who you are and what to do. This phase starts shortly after arrival. We don’t quite feel anchored in our ‘new’ old environment. Realisation that our overseas experience changed not only how we do things, but more importantly our perceptions and assumptions, and a sense of ‘self’.

(Re)-adjustment – this phase is gradual, and it would be wrong to put a time limit on it. For some people it may be short, and their home may not feel as ‘foreign’, and for some the initial highs might be followed by some lows, even depression.

It is not uncommon to feel disappointment, alienation, frustration, maybe even anger. These emotions will manifest themselves in how we go about our daily life and relationships, and we might find ourself criticising once familiar grounds. Feeling unusually tired, stressed, irritated, and even withdrawal from social gatherings are some signs to look out for and take care of.

It is not uncommon that people start thinking of returning to the host location, and some do return. I certainly have come across a number of people who said ‘I can’t live here any more. It’s almost as if the country I lived for 5-7 years is more familiar than the one I was born and grew up in.’

However, for most, every day things start to seem more normal, and they re-establish their ‘new’ old routines, as a result of new attitudes, beliefs, habits and values.
One thing is for sure – we are not the same person and our home is not what it used to be when we left.

How to prepare for returning home?
The most important thing is to understand and be prepared that returning home will not be a smooth transition into the life we once had.

Certainly, (re)-adjustment will be different from person to person, and it is likely that those who adjusted well to living abroad experience stronger reverse culture shock than those who haven’t adjusted so well.

It would be good to think about returning home as a possibility even at the start of our going abroad. For expatriates it is a very real possibility, and for those permanent ones returning does enter consciousness at various points in life, and if we give it some thought at the beginning, we build a foundation for later re-visiting these thoughts with more awareness.

Setting realistic expectations is a good start. As we were advised to set realistic expectations when moving abroad, it is ever so important to set realistic expectations returning home. People and things will be different, and we won’t know how until we experience them.

Our international experience has changed us in more ways than one, professionally and personally. We have become somewhat different person. The new attitudes, beliefs and habits that have developed will shape our perceptions and how we see things and people. Integrating the positive aspects of our international experience with those of our life at home will enable us to retain the good things and continue our growth, this time on the home soil.

Source: Challenging Directions
Date of publication: 27-01-2010

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